Talk to any Arsenal fan and they will tell you that money is ruining football. They will tell you that Arsenal are doing things the right way, and all the big-spending clubs around Europe are not. They will tell you that if these clubs didn’t have the luxury of the millions being pumped into them every year, then Arsenal’s trophy cabinet would be riddled with European Cups and a lot more Premierships.

Although that view is slightly exaggerated and not entirely based in fact, it does have a point. Footballers cost money. They cost money to acquire and then to retain. Some clubs are wealthier than others, for whatever reason, and as such can afford better players, and can afford to keep them. Is this fair? The simple answer is: it depends.

If you look at a club like Manchester United or Real Madrid you see clubs that are able to buy the very best players around, but they have acquired their wealth and status over the years through building up a worldwide fan base, which allows them to earn money through TV revenue and merchandise sales. Money also comes from smart transfer dealings and trophy winnings. This is the perceived “proper” way of making money. Clubs such as Manchester City, Chelsea or PSG, however, earn money almost solely through large investment from ambitious and carefree owners. These three clubs have relatively small fan bases in comparison to Man United or Madrid, and have no large history of success. Because of wealthy owners (arguably lacking any footballing knowledge) they can simply buy who they want to buy and compete with the best of them. Other clubs of the same stature who aren’t lucky enough to be taken over by one of these ‘megabucks’ are left straddling behind, with no hope whatsoever. This does not seem fair to me, or most Arsenal (or Everton) fans.

This is not to say I am against investment altogether. It makes perfect sense to invest a few million into a club in order for them to develop and progress, and as such earn more money. But the sheer amount of cash being pumped into clubs like City doesn’t seem to make any practical sense to me. How will they ever earn that money back?

A football club, in England anyway, is primarily a business. But the spending habits of the major clubs just don’t seem to make sense. Speaking of the 2010 calendar year, UEFA said the aggregate loss of Europe’s top clubs was €578m. Some 65% of income was spent on average on salaries, and 47% of clubs reported losses. In the Championship last season, every £2 a club made, £3 was spent. I just can’t see this happening in any other form of business. Why a football club? Do they not care that they are losing huge amounts of money every day?

Manchester United is one of the biggest football clubs in terms of fan base and revenue in the world. They make millions every year from merchandise and TV revenue, while they consistently sell out one of the largest football grounds in Europe. They win trophies and have a relatively healthy transfer history. They have had their fair share of big money flops (one Veron comes to mind), but deals like the £1m signing of Cantona and the £80m signing of Cristiano Ronaldo are hard to ignore. They may be in huge debt, but this is because of the controversial Glazer takeover, nothing to do with the club’s unhealthy spending. Man United are a club that have retained their success the right way; they have earned their money, and coupled with decent but not over-the-top investment from different owners down the line, have been able to remain at the top of the footballing world.

Manchester City, however, are a completely different story. Compared to United, the blue half of Manchester are a relatively small club, with no huge previous successes and no massive international fan base. They have the highest net spend of any Premiership club since the league’s inauguration and can now buy almost any player they wish to. This luxury is as a direct result of carefree investment from a wealthy foreign owner, and they have not earned their success (future success, which will arrive sooner rather than later) at all. This is the wrong way to become a football force, and, hopefully, the Financial Fair Play rules will crack down on them and disqualify them from European competition.

Chelsea sit atop the net spend table of Premier League clubs with a figure of £504,965,000, with City closing the gap after gathering a net spend of £491,877,000 Manchester United, by far the most successful club in the league’s history, sit considerably behind in 4th (£182,560,000), Liverpool (£226,935,000) in 3rd, and Tottenham Hotspur (£178,332,500) not too far behind in 5th. This table may be an indication that success isn’t always synonymous with money, as Liverpool and Tottenham have never won the Premiership, and neither have City. Arsenal (£21,216,000) & Blackburn Rovers, the only two clubs other than Chelsea and United to win the league, both sit near the bottom of the table, with Blackburn being one of only two clubs (the other being Norwich City) that have spent less than they have received in the transfer market (-£3,723,000). But this list ignores player’s wages and the quality of the cash spent. City wasted away millions on second-tier players in past seasons before finally being only able to attract the very best players to the club more recently. The transfer market is continuously rapidly inflating, so much so that a player sold for £5m in 1995 could well be sold for over £30m in 2011. However, the net spend table shows worrying figures for City & Chelsea fans who attempt to defend their clubs by insisting that “United have bought success for years”. And that’s ignoring the fact that some of United’s greatest players have come very cheap, or in the case of the likes of Giggs, Beckham and Scholes, for free. [i]

It seems that the Financial Fair Play rules are going to arrive just a few years too late to save the Premier League. City are spending all around them with figures that no other club can possibly hope to keep up with, and decent, financially healthy sides such as Arsenal are going to be left behind. United may be able to keep pace for a while, their worldwide popularity keeping them going, but isn’t it just a matter of time before the Red Devils simply cannot keep up with the spending of wealthier teams? When the next Messi or Ronaldo comes about, how can United possibly hope to compete for him in the transfer market when City can just splash out £100m with a £400k a week contract to boot? United will find themselves looking directly towards their youth system, but will be challenged there by more clubs than before; 10 years ago Arsenal’s scouting network and youth academy was enough to keep them at the top. Nowadays almost every club has realised the merits of a system such as theirs.

City may become a double-edged sword and a blessing in disguise, excuse the clichés. With City simply outspending everyone, every other club will have to look to their youth to progress. As such, maybe City’s large spending will be the ironic downfall of big spending itself? Maybe in 10 years’ time, football will revert back to the development of youth, and the Ajax’s of the world will once again rise to the fore. Until, of course, City offer their stars £750k a week.

I can see why you’d try to paint the business model City employ (and every team with owners who are prepared to invest in their club for future growth and revenue) as being somehow immoral, due to the fact we’ve just humiliated you 1-6 in your own backyard.

However, in the world of business, which I inhabit it is normal to invest in your fledgling, or underperforming business, in order to expand to become the best in your commercial sector.

Professional football is indeed all about the money, clubs, or companies, use every advantage they can to establish themselves at the top.

United and the other members of the Sky 4 cartel took full advantage of the ludicrous riches of the Champions League to effectively create a monopoly aside from the rest of the Premiership, to guarantee success every year, but you haven’t objected to that particular financial doping have you?

If you study your arguments closely, you would have to recognise the hypocrisy of your viewpoint.

The “ludicrous riches of the Champions League” came as a result of United being successful. City’s riches came simply as a result of being lucky, by getting bought by a careless owner.

City’s wage bill alone is £21 million higher than entire turnover. My point is not hypocritical; I am simply condemning spending more than you earn. The Global Recession came about because, among many reasons, we were all spending beyond our means. Most of us have wised up a bit now, and realised that it makes sense to only spend realistic sums of money. But I can’t see any financial logic behind City’s spending. They are losing money. United are making money.

You’re not looking beyond the present I’m afraid as far as City’s business model is concerned.

The trend is towards rapid expansion in turnover, mirroring the success on the pitch, as a result of massive initial investment in all areas of the club.

Within a scarily short period of time, City will have converted tens of millions of “supporters” worldwide, in a similar manner to United and Chelsea et al – then you will hardly be able to separate the two Manchester clubs in terms of fanbase and turnover – no doubt you will deride my predictions as fantastical, but there are some very serious business analysts out there who tend to agree with me, not least those in the employ of Sheikh Mansour.

In contrast, if United fail to win the silverware, they will forfeit the profit and the fanbase – these benefits are not set in stone, teams are fashionable and can spiral downwards in time given the correct circumstances.

Look at Liverpool, and be under no illusion this could be United in a couple of years time.

I follow football in general with great interest and for my sins I am Partick Thistle fan. I think your article is somewhat disingenuous. As an outsider looking in, every team down south is spending money on players. United have broken the transfer record countless times, Chelsea have spent Roman’s money, Arsenal have squandered fortunes on plundering French and African clubs and now this City team are blowing oil money doing the same. When the next billionaire comes along and takes over Newcastle, Everton or whoever the pattern will be repeated.

The difficulty with football down south is you have had 4 teams cement places in the Champions League and used that money to further bolster your positions. This ensures a distinct lack of competition – just like our SPL! – except between those 4 clubs. The only way to break that status quo is for some rich dude to muscle in – just like Roman did and now the sheikh mansour is doing.

If we look back over time in football, the most successful clubs are the ones who have spent money. United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool have all done it. Sunderland did it before them and even Everton have. In fact United spent a considerable number of years picking up the odd FA Cup before emphatically winning the league – having spent a shit load of money in the process. The model seems to be spend, win, reinvest prize money and build a bigger club. All seems innately sensible. The problem comes when the competition is stifled. Never again will you see an Aston Villa win the league; never again will you see Notts Forest win the European Cup twice on the run UNLESS the particular club invests shit loads of money to play catch up with the likes of the top 4.

Before Sky, the majority of clubs were run by dodgy chairmen with questionable business practices. Not one club has ‘earned’ the money they spent to get them to the pinnacle. The big differentiator has been what each club has done with the money and how they have built their club following that success and that’s where United must take enormous credit.

Real Madrid, Juventus, both Milan clubs and even Wigan are all propped up by wealthy owners, this is nothing new. The biggest problem football down south faces isn’t billionaire owners, it’s what clubs like City plan to do. Before reading your blog I’ve been mooching around for facts and figures and whilst City have posted huge, huge losses (1) it’s not debt, (2) it does not take into account these mad commercial deals they’ve got, (3) it does not take into account any transfers of people like Bellamy and such, so theoretically, these figures are artificially high on purpose to prove to UEFA they are heading in the right direction in relation to FFP and so get away with it. They then have this training complex and if that comes off, there are going to be some dark days to come as they will go from hoovering up the best current players to hoovering up the best young players.

It all might not come off but it’s looking ominous. I’m quite happy with my head in the sand up here following the mighty Jags as all we have to worry about in Scotland is not money (as none of us have a pot to piss in) but what church you go to! Anyway, sorry for the long ramble, I just didn’t agree with your article but was a good read nonetheless. Good luck.

Reading through your comment, I can’t really find much I disagree with. I agree that the state of the top leagues in Europe (2-4 teams dominating) is an issue, but I don’t think pumping money into one club is the answer. I don’t know what the answer is, just like, as some of these friendly City fans have pointed out, I don’t know a lot of things. But I can see that City are creating a monopoly themselves, and although I may seem bitter, I do not like the idea of City winning titles unchallenged. United may have been successful over the last 20 years, but they never once won a title unchallenged. I may be jumping to bitter conclusions, but I am a United fan, and I suppose I might be slightly unintentionally bias. Thanks for your comment.

Last time I checked, this was a Manchester United website. I am a Man United fan, so obviously I am going to be bias. I tried not to be as much as possible, but my views will obviously be somewhat influenced by the colour of my jersey. Thanks for dropping by though!

I’m not going to reply to everybody’s comment as they are all making the same general points. And to be fair, some of them are good enough points.

1) As I pointed out, United’s debt has very little to do with the club’s financial history but the Glazer’s takeover. United are turning over huge profits.

2) Maybe City’s business model will work in the long run, but to me it still seems like a big risk. In my opinion, they are still spending way too much on wages compared to turnover. Maybe I will be proven wrong? Or maybe not.

3) On my “football is a business” points, I think I was misunderstood. Primarily, I am a fan of football. Why else would I be here writing on this site? But, to the owner (which is why I said in England, because other clubs are owned by the members), it is a business. Most owners in the top flight are in it for the money.

4) I never once suggested money wasn’t behind United’s success. But, as a business model, Man United’s is one of the best in the world.

5) I have nothing against City fans or City players, and I had nothing against City as a football club before the Sheik’s arrival. If I seem bitter, could you blame me? United never had the same financial monopoly as City now hold.

6) Please stop talking about the derby. It doesn’t have much to do with anything, and just makes you seem arrogant. And yes, I know, United fans can be arrogant.

What rubbish, United have raked in millions and bought success because they just happened to be the best team in the land when the football reveloution (sky, prem and champs league) took off.

Proof of this is the fact that United was only worth around 20 million at the start of reveloution and within 8 years it was worth 700 million.

Sky created the modern day Manchester United with TV money and by distributing live football around the world to create the global brand

How Liverpool fans must be wishing the football reveloution had happened 10 years earlier.

United fans like to say City fans are bitter but who is bitter now? Afte 20 years of out spending everyone with Sky money why be so bitter that City now have some oil money?

Just a ccouple of other points, great business selling Ronaldo for 80 million but lets not forgte United bought him for over 12 million in 2003. How many british clubs could buy a player for that sort of money back then?

There is not a chance of the fairplay rules stopping City (or anyone else)playing in Europe. Apart from the fact City will meet the rules if they were banned City’s lawyers would be all over UEFA like a swarm of bees.

Arsenal…another bitter big club with loads of money happy with its lot until some other clubs got more money than them.

When you said “It seems that the Financial Fair Play rules are going to arrive just a few years too late to save the Premier League” did you really mean save United?

Having read your article attempting to justify success for Real Madrid and Manchester United I find some of your conclusions rather flawed. Barcelona and Real Madrid share between themselves 70% of TV rights revenue leaving other top Spanish clubs the crumbs to share amongst themselves this has gone on for a long time. Real Madrid has been subsidised up to the hilt for many years this is hardly fair play and yet nobody complained about this disparity,when they should have done!

Jack Walker’s wealth bought the Premiership for Blackburn Rovers & not too many people complained about it, because they were happy to see a trophy going to a different club for a change. When Everton were successful in the past it is because the owners then had sufficient funds to get better quality players and pay good wages. The great Spurs team of the 60’s achieved greatness because of the purchase of many great Scottish players, not too many locally sourced players there either. West Ham United had some quality football players in the past and although they were great to watch only had limited success.

It is therefore only possible for football clubs that have a large fan base or a benefactor to compete at the highest level in the Premiership. The big clubs are only big because they have funds and large gates etc. If a benefactor comes to a club and offers his wealth to make them a great football club what is new?

Sheik Mansour’s wealth appears to have broken the hold Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal have had on the Premiership thus it is no longer a monopoly. Manchester United raise substantial sums of money as a football club, lots of which is used by “The Glazers” to finance their lifestyle and add indebtedness to the club hardly an ideal situation!

It looks to an outsider that if Sheik Mansour’s wealth helps an impoverished part of Manchester become the World’s biggest football academy and gives a group of other football supporters the taste of success then it can only be a good thing. The competitiveness of the Premier League has suddenly increased & more interest will help the game remain commercial and viable, but probably at the cost of the smaller less well financed clubs.
Amen

The riches of the champions league came from TV money and United benefitted from that money.

What would you have “relatively small clubs” like City do for the next 100 years? Just be extras in the soap opera that is Manchester United winning the Prem League? No thanks.

As I said in a previous post United have always been bigger than City but not by much, the huge gulf has only happened as a result of Sky TV, prem and champs league and United being “lucky” enough to be the best tean at the time thus able to rake the money in.

Now it’s City’s turn to be “lucky” and we have had to “waste” money to play catch up.

As for the fair play rules they are jus a scam to keep the big clubs big and nothing to do with fair play.

well matt, i didn’t manage to read the whole whine, but some bits that caught my eye are plenty to confirm my first thoughts.

your lack of knowledge is quite staggering. I’m tempted to think you couldn’t be -quite- this stupid and therefore this is a bile ridden bias filled posit rather than something you actually believe.

to use real madrid as an example of the right way to build a club is quite possibly the worst piece of blogging since tim berners-lee first sharpened his pencil and thought ‘here’s an interesting idea’.

also your assertion that “A football club, in England anyway, is primarily a business.” is comical. Your favoured club (or corporate entity) may be a business tool (to pay off over leveraged shopping centres in Florida) but many others, including mine, are still football clubs. In case you forgot that’s a game, an entertainment ( in our case at least) a part of local society designed primarily as a release from the daily grind and a diversion from other more mundane daily goings on. So, you stick to your FT and balance sheets ( do they put that in the match programme?) and i’ll keep going to the match with friends, buying a pie and a couple of pints and shouting myself hoarse as we knock over every opposition team who take to our field with their knees knocking audibly from my seat 25 rows back. chid. oh and 1-6, enjoy the derby ?

Yet another United fan who spouts rubbish about how moral united were to sell their soul to the Far East and pretty much negotiate their own deal with Sky back in the early nineties. People like this never seem to mention that they themselves were seen as under-achievers back then, mainly looking in when trophies were given out. Up until the Sky money and the Champions League was formed it was City who had won the last league title some twenty-five years earlier. Yet plank’s like this will try and tell you united’s domininance has nothing to do with money and all to do with history and a tradition of winning. You are just another bitter little United fan who is seeing the shift in power, in the rules you helped create I might add, and are watching the monopoly you have held for so long slipping out of your fingers. I can only hope that if there is such a thing as reincarnation you can come back as a sick Swan! Now that would be justice.

Quite amusing. Almost all comments here are by City fans. Defensive much? Don’t worry, when you finally win that elusive Premier League title, everyone in the world will know why it happened. And it’s nothing to do with City or City fans, but rather the result of a never-ending flow of black gold from the Arabian Peninsula. Something to be proud of, for sure.

This is the kind of tripe peddled by Arsenal fans too – difficult to tell them apart nowadays.

Did you feel bad during and after the derby, or were you consoled by the fact that the humiliation was fuelled by oil money? Or were you one of the many thousands who scuttled out of the ground with 30 minutes still to go?

How many United “supporters” do you think converted to another team that day and since?

I’m guessing tens of thousands, at least.

In the future, how many young fans all over the world will be dreaming of playing like Balotelli, Aguero, Silva, Yaya, Dzeko, Hart, Richards, and all those top stars now on City’s oil-fuelled books?

With the wonderful football City are playing no one will care where the money came from when they win the prem league again and again and again.

And just as everyone has forgotten Sky made the modern day Manchester United everyone will forget it was oil that made City especially as our soon to be 400 player strong academy kicks in, don’t worry I am sure you can pick up a few of our academy players that don’t make the grade for us.

I don’t there’s any hypocrisy in Wrafter’s arguement. Both United and Ciy spend a lot of money on footballers. The difference, (and what I think Wrafter was trying to point out) is where that money comes from. United’s spending is based on the money the club generates, whereas City’s money comes from a rich owner. If you’re a fan of club without those financial resources, it sucks either way. However, I believe, and I suspect most football fans would agree with me, it’s much more distasteful when that spending power comes from luck (a rich owner buying the team) than from from sustained success.

for many years i have followed UNITED people are forgeting the busby babes now where they from? and did we have a european cup then?also were we a big club back then no sky money no billionaire nothing we produced but where was city understandbly city are all high and mighty with a billionaire but what if he gets bored and also is it me or do city get sky money too and whats the name of the stadium translated seems roman is starting to get bored of chelsea and not really investing same will happen with city im affraid i for one like the idea of two northern clubs competing for all competitions but to say city are better than united in terms of fanbase and history speaks for itself and united will see off city like they did with chelsea if united played well and didn’t have a man sent off and played vidic now would it be the same result we’ve had results like that over the years and won the league 5pts clear lol we’ve come back from 12 keep looking over your shoulder we’ve been here before have you city fans typical we have a spoon fed government and a spoon fed city coincidence lol.

until the Sky money skewed the financial situation out of all proportion in the early 90’s onwards, both City and united were more or less equal in terms of success and fanbase – the late sixties/early seventies was a magical time to be a Manchester football supporter of either persuasion.

Since the Premiership, and Champions League rewards came to the select, lucky few clubs, the gap between the clubs has widened so dramatically that the only way a club can hope to compete is to plough approx £400 million pounds into their playing staff.
Incidentally, if you take the minimum income per year from Champions League participation as £20 million pounds, and multiply it by the number of years the Champions League has been in existence and rewarding the same clubs, 20, you get the figure of £400 million.
This is no coincidence.

As United have in fact gone further than the group stages most seasons in the CL, they have earned far more than the £400 million invested by City, therefore you could say City have caught up by spending less than expected. (Although City have yet to prove they have a good enough squad to win the CL, and so more investment may be required yet – which will no doubt send all you Arsenal fans into fits of rage).

I hate the fact that the only way to overcome these financial inequalities is to spend massively, and all at once, thanks to FFFP, but it’s the only way under the present conditions.

If Fifa/Uefa were to pay the money generated by their competitions out equally to all professional clubs in the Eurozone, then we’d see a chance of new faces winning cups, but until that day comes, there will never be true parity.

Martin Samuel has written a very good piece about City’s situation today in the Daily Mail, worth a read for an unbiased viewpoint –

To claim that Man United’s entire Champions League earnings over the past 20 years proves that they bought success just like City are doing now is astoundingly nonsensical. City have basically spent £400 million in one go. And you are ignoring the fact that there is a lot more to spend on whilst running a football club than transfer fees. The big one, of course, is wages. If you take player’s wages into account, that figure over the last few years gets close on a million quid. The claim that United’s earnings of £400m over the last 20 years makes it fair ground has no logic behind it whatsoever.

I’ll read the article, by the way, and, as always, thanks for commenting.

Lol. It was OK when you were the (under-perfporming) richest club in the world but now someone else has more money it’s not fair hahahaha. Now you know how everyone else feels. Just wait til the FA and Refs Association desert you too (along with your glory hunting fan base) then you’ll be in trouble.

You are wrong United’s money both directly and indirectly comes from Sky TV.

True after 20 years of being drip feed cash from TV money and the success that bought and brought United do now generate a lot of their own income but then so will City in 10 years time

All those fans around the world buying those shirts only do so as a result of Sky TV. Did you sell millions of shirts around the world pre 1990? No

United had the “luck” to be the best team in the land when sky, prem and champs league came along and United could fill their boots with all that cash and then spend it on players.

Now you want to shut the door on other clubs having their share of luck. What are you worried about? If Uniteds success has not been down to money all these years then they should have no problem maintaining that success.

The truth is in the modern era United have had more money to spend than anyone else and thats why they are where they are.

Look at the stats, most of you honours have been won during the relatively short period of time that Sky has pumped huge amounts of cash into your club and publcised it around the world on their TV channels whilst paying United for the privilege. No wonder Sky wanted to buy its creation.

Sky is why United went from a club worth 20 million to 700 million 8 years.

Fergie is a great manager and had he not been there money or no money United would not have been so successful, he has my begruding respect.

That said don’t kid yourself there was a masterplan to get United where they are today. Certainly not by Martin Edwareds or the Glaziers.

The huge revenue and worldwide fan base just happened to United. They didn’t plan it. They didn’t grow it, it just fell into their lap.

To all those sensible United fans out there I hope United continues to be almost as successful as City to the idiot fans I look forward to Uniteds down fall. I would love to see how many fans would stick by their club with three or four years outside the champs league or even fighting relegation!!

Believe me it will happen eventually I know this the same way I knew it when I explained to my young children 10 years ago that eventually City would be the best club in Manchester.

As for the history United fans go on about does anyone care that Everton won the league 9 times or Sunderland did it for the 6th time in 1936? The present is all that really counts

I’m new to this site. Is there usually this many City fans? Do they just come to this United website to hate? I really don’t understand. I’ve never been on a City website, official or unofficial, in my life.

Matt,
there are indeed several City fans out here in Cyberspace.
The reason we come to this website is that this article has appeared on the Newsnow Man City feed, therefore piquing the interest of said fans.
Of course the content of the article was rather controversial in the eyes of the City fans.
You should know your enemy, so please feel free to visit City forums and correct any inaccuracies you may find 🙂